Kimi Yamada was eleven years old in 1907, and had attended the LDS missionaries’ Sunday School for a year and a half. She was not a member of the Church, and I do not find a record of her ever having been baptized.

The aunt with whom she lived told the missionaries that Kimi knelt in prayer every night and morning, and “is so earnest in her prayers that she will not say good morning or anything else to us before she says her prayers to God.”

Her letter to the Juvenile Instructor was translated by Elder Alma O. Taylor, who explained one part of Kimi’s letter by saying that the little girl had objected to a Methodist teacher’s denial that Joseph Smith had seen God. His diaries — available online at the BYU library — refer to Kimi’s participation in Sunday School, her singing with a small group of girls on special programs, and her glee at a Christmas party given by the elders.

Dear Letter-Box:

I have been going to Sunday School since last year. But I am very sorry that neither my aunt nor mother ever go to Sunday School. Once I started to another church’s Sunday School, but the teacher said that Moses was the only man that had seen God, so I thought they must be wrong, and came back to the Latter-day Saints’ Sunday School.

I hope the Christmas Party this year will be a good one like it was last year, and that we can sing and pray and recite. It makes me happy to think of Christmas.

I don’t know if it will help in your search for her baptismal record or not, but — assuming I’m reading the letter correctly — her full first name is Kimiko. Kimi would be a common diminutive for an 11-year-old girl, though.

A wonderful little letter. I think Chad Too is right about her name–it certainly ends with “ko”. I trust that Elder Taylor got the rest of the name right, as it appears that “Ki” is a reading for 喜 the first character in her given name.

The letter remains remarkably readable, even though Japanese has undergone some changes since 1907. I think that the venerable Elder Taylor was adopting what was common practice at the time – to drop the “ko” when anglicizing girls’ names.

-dono comes from Tono, which generally is translated as “Lord”. It’s not used much in normal conversation, but it still is used in some business correspondences – especially between very powerful people. It is stronger than -san (generic title of respect) and usually slightly weaker than -sama (the honorific used to denote God [Kami-sama] – which, ironically, also is close to Kaimi).

(Chan is the children’s analog for “-san” which is the general honorific used in most speech. San is generally translated as Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. “Chan” would be used when talking to a little child, so Kaimi-chan would be sort of amusing.)

The sense of what to call someone in Japanese honorifics is an art that takes a long time to develop and –for most of us Japanese RMs– a muscle that was once well-toned that we seldom get to exercise anymore.